


Moorings

by timeandcelery



Category: Doctor Who (1963)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Gen, Hugs, Inspirational Speeches, M/M, Space Jacobites
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-22
Updated: 2017-07-22
Packaged: 2018-12-05 08:31:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,198
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11574321
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/timeandcelery/pseuds/timeandcelery
Summary: A trip to a war-torn planet ends badly for everyone, but Jamie takes it worst of all.(Pretty much gen. Referenced violence, emotions, hugs.)





	Moorings

**Author's Note:**

> I rediscovered this among a bunch of old fic from 2010-11 and completely rewrote it; the original was inspired by the still-wonderful lostthehat.

“Perhaps,” the Doctor says into the uncomfortable quiet of the console room, “that might have gone better.”

“Might have gone better?” Polly asks, her voice high and incredulous. “They all _died_! For nothing!” Her face is stained with someone else’s blood, and she’s staring at him, wild and wounded, demanding answers. Behind her Ben gazes resolutely at the floor. 

The Doctor wrings his hands, but there’s nothing to say. She’s right. A day earlier they landed in a war zone, but now they're leaving a charnel-house. 

There was nothing he could have done. He knows that. If he had not defused the core, the entire satellite would have exploded; if he had headed off the Voice’s reinforcements instead, the Last Ones would have succumbed to the gases, _and_ the satellite would have exploded, and then the order to leave no survivors would have arrived with its goal already met.

He will do better tomorrow. For the Last Ones, and for them. But that is not enough, and he knows that too.

"Doctor?" Polly looks as if she’s going to say something else but then abruptly turns away, leaning on the wall and hiding her face. Abandoning the console, the Doctor darts toward her, but Ben reaches her first.

“Pol?”

She flinches when he touches her, but then she pulls him toward her to bury her head in his shoulder. If she is crying, she’s crying silently.

Ben looks across at the Doctor; he looks more angry than hurt, but his expression wavers. “I’ve got her.” His voice does, too. “And I’m fine, ‘fore you start going on about that. It’ll take more than that to shake me.”

It would do no good to argue. Not right now. And they have each other, at least. The Doctor fusses with the controls for a moment before saying, “Well, if you’re absolutely certain...” He trails off into silence. Polly still says nothing. Ben mutters an affirmative, and the Doctor turns and begins, “Jamie, are you al—”

Jamie isn’t there. In fact, he’s disappeared entirely from the console room, and given the state that the Doctor last saw him in—well. He can’t have gone far, at least. Flustered and more worried than he has any right to be, he hurries out of the room and down the hall, opening doors at random. 

In the end he finds Jamie exactly where he half-expected to. He’s sitting on the edge of his own bed, hunched over, and when the Doctor opens the door, he lifts his bowed head just enough to see who’s there before dropping it again. He has something in his hands: his chanter, the Doctor realizes after a moment.

As quietly as he can, he makes his way across the room and sits next to him. Jamie doesn't look at him, just moves his fingers over the chanter in silent notes. There are tear tracks in the grime on his face. “Jamie?”

“I…” He breaks off. “I cannae get it out of my head, Doctor. I keep seein’ it.”

He pats him on the shoulder, because it seems like the thing to do. “It was unfortunate, Jamie. Very unfortunate. And rather messy.”

“Messy?” He makes a _tch_ noise, but his heart isn’t in it. “I'm not bothered by a bit of blood. But the camp… what they were doing there... I couldn’t…” He seems to collapse on himself another degree.

“Jamie, I'm afraid there was nothing we could have done to prevent it.” Ah. Probably ought to get more to the point. “There was nothing _you_ could have done to prevent it.” 

Jamie draws back at that. His eyes are dry, and his face is set. He looks almost angry. “You didn’t see what they’d done to the fellows they’d captured. What they’d--” He breaks off and looks away, and the Doctor reaches over to touch his shoulder.

“Ben told me what they did,” he says quietly. “We thought that they had taken you.”

“You did?”

“Well, I’m very glad that they didn’t!”

A faint smile tugs at the corners of Jamie’s mouth, just for a brief second, but it fades right away. “We should’ve been able to do something. Save ‘em. Any of ‘em.” 

“I know. I wish we could have.” He exhales. “I am sorry.”

The hand that isn’t holding the chanter clenches. “There must’ve been something.”

“I wish there were.” He reaches out and puts a hand on Jamie’s knee; the touch, at last, gets him to look over at the Doctor. “Oh, my,” he stammers. “Oh, no.” 

On Jamie’s face is despair and, worse, familiarity. Without warning he drops the chanter on the bed and clutches heavily at the Doctor’s coat until his hands still against his back; he hesitates only for a split second before burying his face in the Doctor’s shoulder. The Doctor moves without thinking, wrapping one arm around Jamie’s trembling shoulders and bringing his other hand up to rest on the back of his head. Jamie is warm and heavy and shaking a little, and he smells of smoke and melted electronics, and the Doctor holds him until he stills and his breathing starts to slow.

Eventually he moves, pulling back just the slightest, and with an unhappy sound Jamie pulls him back, tugging at his coat. He relents. “It’s all right. I have you.” 

Jamie slips his arms inside the Doctor’s coat to wrap them almost desperately around him. “They were right,” he says after a while, his voice catching. “They were right, an’ they never had a chance.”

“No, not a real one,” the Doctor concedes, trying to keep his voice even as Jamie’s arms tighten. “It’s a miracle that even we got out alive. They were doomed from the beginning.”

“Aye,” Jamie mumbles into the Doctor’s shoulder. “I know they were. They knew they were, by then. An’ they fought anyway. Fought for their prince, and he left them to _die_.”

Of course.

He had worried as much.

“Oh, Jamie.... oh, no.” Jamie goes still again, and quiet, and the Doctor can hear his breath catch. Time passes, and they stay like that. Eventually the Doctor stirs, and runs a hand over Jamie’s hair, and speaks. “We see terrible things, out here," he says. "Sometimes we see them over and over, until it seems that the same pattern is written on every world we touch. But, Jamie, we will see other things. Better ones."

"You can't be _sure_."

"Yes, I can be. They are happening right at this moment, if only we find the right place. They will hardly undo the ones that end this way. Especially not the ones that are our pasts—those will quiet with time, but they will never be undone.” Jamie stirs, and he pauses. “This will not be the last time this happens. It never will be the last time. But that also means that there will never be a last time where we can change things, you and I and Ben and Polly—or anyone. It means that there will never be a last time for something wonderful to happen.”

Jamie pulls away and fixes him with red-rimmed, questioning eyes. “Never?”

“Never.”


End file.
